


there are spells in the leaves

by anirondack



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: A Little Sad In Parts, Cabeswater - Freeform, Friendship, Gen, Some Blue Lily Lily Blue Spoilers, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5049790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anirondack/pseuds/anirondack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam finds Noah in Cabeswater. Noah asks for a tarot reading.</p><p>Takes place somewhere in the middle of Blue Lily Lily Blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there are spells in the leaves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vharmons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vharmons/gifts).



> Written for the Raven Cycle Ship Swap. Prompt was for Adam/Noah, and I went the friendship route.
> 
> See the end notes for links to images of the tarot card that Adam pulls.

Cabeswater is quiet today. Adam appreciates it.

Sometimes the trees are loud, whispering things that Adam doesn’t understand in tones he can’t ignore. Sometimes birds scream above him in ways he’s never heard birds scream before, unholy and hollow from every direction. Sometimes he hears the rustle of pale white animals that he can’t see, or footsteps from humans who never makes themselves known.

But today it’s quiet.

The air cools the further he enters the forest, aimlessly following the scattered patches of sunlight that make it through the canopy of leaves. He taps the pack of cards in his pocket and zips up his old threadbare jacket, walking until he gets to a rough circle of trees with no water running through the middle. He paces around the outer edge of the circle, and when he looks back, Noah is perched on a log, looking as tired and rumpled as ever in his Aglionby sweater but with a warm smile on his face.

“Hey,” he says happily, then stretches a little, reaching his arms back behind him. “Just you today?”

“Just me,” Adam confirms. He picks his way across the clearing, covered in brittle sticks that snap easily underfoot, and sits down on the ground next to Noah’s legs. He leans his head against Noah’s knee and Noah jiggles his foot a little.

“Are we on a mission?” Noah asks. A leaf falls into Adam’s hair and Noah picks it out.

“Not right now, no. I’m trying to get a reading on where I have to go next, but the cards aren’t making sense to me.” Adam retrieves Persephone’s tarot cards and pops open the box, running his thumb over the tired, worn edges. “I was hoping being in Cabeswater would help.”

“I see. Makes sense.” Noah reaches down and quickly runs his fingers through Adam’s hair. “Can I help?”

“I don’t think so,” Adam replies. “I’m the Magician, supposedly, so I think I have to draw and interpret them.”

“Maybe Cabeswater just doesn’t have anything for you to do right now,” Noah suggests.

Adam doesn’t snort, because it feels rude to do it in front of Cabeswater, while talking about Cabeswater, but he does allow himself to roll his eyes. “Cabeswater always has something for me to do. It’s just a matter of me figuring out what it is.”

Noah says nothing. He touches Adam’s shoulder gently. His fingers are cold even through Adam’s jacket.

Adam slides the cards out of the box and holds them out to Noah. “Here. You can shuffle.”

Noah accepts the cards and Adam scoots away to sit across from him. He cuts the deck and puts the bottom half on top, shuffles, cuts the deck again, shuffles, cuts the deck, shuffles. On the last shuffle, Noah suddenly looks a little more there, and he passes the deck back to Adam. “This one feels good.”

Adam accepts the deck and sets it on the ground between them. He flips the top card over and sets it back on top of the deck. He knows that it’s a hand holding a large golden pentacle in the sky, but then the hand is his hand and the pentacle is a flat stone, dully colored and pleasantly smooth and warm to the touch, like the ley line lives in it. The sky is the ground, a hole dug about six or seven inches deep, and then Adam is rolling the stone into the hole, laying it flat on the bottom and burying it with a layer of fallen leaves and a layer of dirt. The ground is brown and then it’s green and the leaves around him shift through the seasons.

And then the sky is the sky again and the hand is holding a yellow circle and not a rock and Adam is sitting on the ground with Noah watching him intently.

“What did you see?”

“I have to bury something,” Adam says. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. “A stone. Not a big one, like… palm sized. And grey.”

“Okay. Where is it? We can go find it.”

Adam shakes his head. “I don’t know. Cabeswater didn’t tell me, or if it did, I missed it.”

“Oh. That’s okay. Cabeswater will let you know when you need to know.”

“Yeah. I like it better when I ask, though.” Adam slots the card back into the deck, somewhere around the middle. He runs his thumb along the bottom edge of the top few cards. “But it’s more than I’ve gotten anywhere else, so it’s a start.”

Noah nods sympathetically. “If I feel anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, man.” Adam scoops up the cards and finds the box, holding his notes to the side of the thin cardboard, but before he can slide the cards in, Noah’s hand on his wrist stops him.

“Can you do one for me?” Noah asks shyly.

Adam looks up. “Hmm?”

“Can you do a reading for me? I’ve never gotten one.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay.” Adam sets the box down on the ground. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to interpret them for you properly. I just have some notes that Persephone told me about. You should go to Blue’s place for a real reading.”

Noah shakes his head sadly. “Can’t. I’d rather you did it than Blue’s moms anyway.”

Adam feels a strange sort of warm pride in that. He hands Noah the the deck. “Persephone said that some three card tarot reads are your past, present, and future. Here, shuffle until they feel good again.”

Adam watches as Noah shuffles the deck several times, fascinated as he seems to pulse slightly. At times, it looks like sunlight is filtering through him somehow, and then suddenly he’s just as solid as Adam. Noah cuts the deck in threes, shuffles the smaller stacks, and weaves them back together. He puts his hand on top of the deck, frowns, places a card from the middle on top, and then gasps quietly. “This is good.”

Adam takes the offered deck and lets it rest in his palm. He kind of sees what Noah means – if he focuses, he thinks he can feel the cards humming. He sets the deck down, knocks on it three times, and sweeps the cards across the forest floor, making sure they’re all visible at least a little bit. Noah leans down, arms folded on his knees and chin resting on his arms.

“What do I do?” he asks.

“Pick one that feels good,” Adam says. “And flip it over sideways when you do, not top to bottom. Upside down cards mean different things.”

“Oh, okay.” Noah runs his fingers over the line of cards, pausing every now and then. He flickers a little and it’s still kind of unnerving. Adam feels like he should be used to it, but maybe he never will be. Eventually, Noah pushes one card out toward Adam with his index finger and turns it over. “It’s a tower.”

Adam picks the card up and turns it upright. It is, indeed, a tower, but it doesn’t look like the tower on the card has much longer to live. A lightning bolt strikes the top of it and fire burns around it and it sheds its residents high in the air, leaving them to fall. The card makes Adam uneasy, so he sets it back down in front of Noah, upside down again.

He digs his hand-written page of notes out of the box, unfolding it and tracking down the list of Major Arcana. “Tower. Disaster, upheaval, sudden change. It looks like something bad that comes out of the blue and hurts you.”

Noah gives him a tense look. “Past, present, and future, you said?”

Adam nods. “First card is past, second is present, and the third is the future.” Then he realizes. “Oh. Yeah. I guess you should get this card.”

Noah picks it up, studying the small flames that rain from the clouds. “Disaster and sudden change. I guess you could say that.” His smudge looks dark. Adam wonders if it’s been that way the whole day and he’s just noticing it now.

“It’s past, at least. Not now and not in the future,” Adam says gently.

Noah nods, drawing his knees tighter to his chest. “That would be nice.”

Adam has the strong desire to reach out and touch Noah’s arm, but suddenly he’s not sure that his hand wouldn’t just pass right through him. “Pick another one. This one’s your present card.”

“Should I reshuffle?”

“I don’t think so. I usually just draw one, so I’m not sure. You can if you want, I guess.”

Noah considers it, then shakes his head. “I’ll just pick another one.” He sets the Tower off to the side and places both hands on the line of cards. A rush of a breeze whirls around them. Noah moves to take a card, then changes his mind and takes the one next to it. He flips it over and sets it down in front of Adam. “That appears to be an upside-down naked lady.”

“She looks right side up to me,” Adam replies dryly. He picks the card up and examines it. The text at the bottom says _The World_ on it.

“Are you sure that’s my present card? I’m not exactly surrounded by naked women,” Noah says.

“It’s the World. I don’t know why the world is a naked woman, but it is.” Adam looks at his notes again. “The World signifies completion, but you pulled it upside down, so… the upside down World is a lack of completion, I guess, or maybe a lack of closure.”

Noah frowns. “Wouldn’t ‘closure’ have been… the sacrifice? The stampede? When you– when he died.”

“I don’t know. Did you feel particularly closed after that?” Adam asks.

“I guess not.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re still here and existing and stuff,” Adam suggests. “Ghost stories always talk about people haunting around until they can tie up whatever they didn’t finish in life, and then moving on once they’ve set things right.”

“The only thing I didn’t finish when I was alive is high school,” Noah says, a little bitterly. “I didn’t have a lot going on to not get tied up. Do you think I’m–” He falls silent for a moment, then takes the card back, studying it. “Am I supposed to move on?”

“I don’t know,” Adam says softly. “Not if you don’t have anything to move on from.” He glances at Noah’s two cards. So far, they don’t look like a very happy spread. “Maybe the sheer force of Gansey is keeping you around.”

Noah snorts out a laugh. “He’s definitely got some sort of magic magnet in him.” Then his smile fades again and he stares at The World. “Maybe it is that I’m still here. I’m not closed.”

“I mean… maybe. It’s also lack of completion, though,” Adam says, successfully keeping a note of hope out of his voice. He very much does not want to think about Noah ever becoming closed to them. “We made a ton of progress with Glendower this summer but we haven’t actually found him yet, so that’s a lack of completion. For all of us, really. Bet we’d all draw upside down naked women for our second card.”

Noah doesn’t smile this time. “Blue wouldn’t. She’d draw Page of Cups.” He traces a spiral in the dirt with his finger. “She always draws Page of Cups.”

“She’d make a special exception for Glendower, I’m sure,” Adam says, which does earn a small, amused huff from Noah, so he takes it as a victory. “Do your last one?”

Noah makes a motion like he’s cracking his knuckles, and the sound of sticks snapping far away echoes through the clearing. He doesn’t even feel the line this time, just points to a card near the far right end and says, “This one.”

Adam eases the card from the line and flips it over so it’s facing Noah. Upside down, he reads _Wheel of Fortune_.

“This is my future card, right?” Noah asks.

“Uh huh.”

“So what I’m getting is I’m going to watch a lot of daytime TV very soon.”

Adam laughs, and it surrounds them like the trees are laughing with him. “At least watch Jeopardy, you might learn something.”

Noah traces his fingertip around the wheel. “What’s it mean?”

Adam looks at his notes. “It looks like a pretty good card. It’s good karma. External stuff can affect you, but you have to have faith in the universe to take care of you, and. Uh. Hm.”

In his own scribbled hand that he doesn’t remember writing, _end of a cycle, life cycles, turning points_.

“Hm?” Noah questions.

_Life cycles._

“It’s, um.”

_End of a cycle._

“What?”

_Lack of closure._

“It’s just… A good and bad card,” Adam says, slightly breathless. “You know, ups and downs. The circle of life keeps turning, you know? If you’ve been up, you might go down, and if you’ve been down, you’ll go back up.”

_End of a life._

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Noah says cautiously. “It’s not like the past few months have been awful, but they haven’t exactly been amazing either.”

“Yeah,” Adam agrees, but he’s not sure he even heard what Noah said. His heart is suddenly pounding in his chest, hard enough that he’s surprised Noah can’t somehow hear it. His hands feel shaky, so he sets the paper down so Noah won’t notice.

_End of a cycle. End of a life._

“–might not even notice, like we turned the wheel on its side or something,” Noah continues, and Adam realizes that he hasn’t been listening at all. “I mean, that’s a super Gansey thing, but Excelsior, right?”

“Onwards and upwards,” Adam says without a lot of feeling.

Noah gives him an odd look. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m– Yeah. I’m good. Just… Cabeswater.”

“Oh, do you think you should do another card?”

Adam doesn’t think he should do another card, but he nods anyway. He stuffs the Wheel of Fortune back into the deck, face down, and collapses it all together. Noah hands him the other two cards and Adam shuffles them hard, bending a couple corners by accident. Noah fades a little as he cuts the deck and Adam’s stomach lurches, so he cuts it again and that seems to help some.

Noah knocks three times on the deck and Adam takes the third card from the bottom because it feels like the right thing to do. It’s a swords card this time, a man rowing a boat with a woman, a child, and six swords in it. Or at least, it is to Adam when he sets the card down. To Noah, the boat and the swords are falling from the sky.

“What’s that one?”

“Six of Swords,” Adam murmurs. He picks up his paper again, but the words are gone, replaced with an ever-growing spiraled mass of messy black ink. Adam glances up at Noah, but the ink rises up off the page like twisted roots outgrowing their land and obscures everything. Even he has not seen all of Cabeswater, not even in his dreams, but he can feel the root system in his hands. His feet know the precise number of steps to the stone, the exact fraction of a mile away from this clearing that he has to dig a hole. The path sears itself into his brain, deep enough that he could walk through Cabeswater with his eyes closed and still end up where he needs to go.

“Adam?” Noah’s voice breaks through the ink, and then there’s shadow around them, like ink had seeped into the ground. “What does it mean?”

Adam looks at the card again, and it’s just six swords, a boat, and its passengers again. “It means moving forward,” he says. “I know where to go now.” He folds up the notes, now bearing only his handwriting again, and stuffs them back in the box, then slides the Six of Swords back into the deck, boxes the cards, and shoves the box in his pocket.

Noah nods, pleased. “See? Told you.”

“Uh huh.” Adam stands slowly, brushing stray leaves from his jeans. “Walk with me?”

He holds out a hand and Noah takes it, even though he doesn’t need it, and pulls himself up. Adam holds onto him for a moment longer and the Wheel of Fortune spins in his head.

They walk together for a while, twisting and turning and tripping over sticks. Noah by all accounts should be able to phase through them, but he doesn’t, stumbling right alongside Adam and snapping twigs underfoot.

They walk until Adam abruptly throws out an arm and says, “Here,” and they look down and sure enough, half buried in the dirt, there’s the stone that Adam saw in the card. He pries it out of the ground and dusts it off with his shirt. It feels just as warm as he had imagined it, smooth and round and flat and living. He passes it to Noah, and Noah gets a small surge in opacity as his fingers close around it. “This one.”

“Yeah,” Noah says softly. “This one is a good one.”

Adam lets Noah carry the stone as they move deeper into the forest. Noah seems to be more alive with every step, and Adam watches him more than the path he’s taking. He knows Cabeswater will take care of him, but he doesn’t know how Cabeswater could fail to take care of Noah, when he looks so solid and real in its heart. He brushes against Noah and Noah feels so corporeal that he doesn’t steal any heat from the air, doesn’t freeze Adam’s arm through his jacket like he had when Adam had found him in the clearing; instead, Noah just bumps his shoulder against Adam’s in retaliation and grins at him. Adam smiles back gently and _end of a life_ hangs on his lips.

They find the place to bury the stone in another clearing, so similar to the one they’d left that Adam would swear it was the same place if Cabeswater didn’t have its own best interests in mind. He picks up a sturdy looking stick and drags it along the dirt until it doesn’t drag anymore, and where it stops, he drives it hard into the ground. “Here.”

“Okay,” Noah agrees. “What should I do?”

“I need…” Adam closes his eyes. “Leaves. I need to collect leaves. Can you start digging? Like six inches down.”

“‘Kay.” Noah crouches down next to the stick and digs his fingers into the dirt around the stick. Adam half expects him to sink through, but Noah scrapes up two handfuls of dirt and piles them neatly about a foot away.

“Okay. Cool.” Adam watches him a moment more, then strips off his jacket to carry the leaves. Autumn has loosened a lot of the trees and green and gold drifts around them like sparse puddles washing through the clearing. Adam paces slowly around the edges, picking up leaves whenever Cabeswater gives him an urge, until his jacket is a puddle of gold and orange and tired, fading green. The leaves are all dead, but he feels like he’s carrying a living creature in his arms. The hum of the ley line carries on in his chest.

He sets the jacket full of leaves next to Noah, who has a pile of earth next to him and dirty fingernails. Noah retreats a couple inches and Adam holds his palm flat over the entrance to the hole. It’s wide enough, and just a little too shallow, so he and Noah take turns scooping out dirt until the wind rushes around them and Adam says, “It’s good.”

Noah hands him the stone and Adam holds it for a moment with his eyes closed, then presses it down to the very bottom of the hole. It lies flat, like they just unearthed it rather than planting it; maybe it used to be there until it was moved. Something shifts in Adam’s mind, close to right for something he didn’t know was wrong. It’s an odd relief for a previously unknown ailment.

They pile handfuls of leaves over the hole, crushing them down to push out the air, and then Adam drags the dirt pile over and fills in the rest of the space. He pats it down, and then steps on it a little bit, and as soon as the ground is level again, Noah says, “Oh!” and a rain of dried leaves comes crashing down on them. Adam throws his arms over his head, but nothing heavier than twigs hits him; when he looks up again, the ground is covered in a gold ocean and the leaves in the trees are green again.

Noah looks delighted. “That was so cool!” he tells Adam excitedly. Adam looks at him and his smudge is all but invisible. He looks so real – too real – _end of a life_ – and he grins at Adam and Adam can see a dead seven year old corpse masquerading as a live seventeen year old boy, with dark energy in his twice interred bones dragging him down into the ground again. He reaches out to touch Noah and Noah is solid, flesh like him, happy and halfway to not freezing.

“Adam?”

Adam steps forward and wraps his arms around Noah. Noah makes a surprised noise, but he relaxes into it, leaning his chin on Adam’s shoulders and gripping the back of his shirt lightly.

“Thanks,” Adam says thickly. “For coming with me.”

“Sure, man. No problem,” Noah replies. He sounds a little confused, but he doesn’t make any move to leave, so Adam presses his face into Noah’s cold neck and pretends there’s a heartbeat there until he can’t bear it anymore.

He thinks about Glendower and he thinks about the favor and he thinks about his scholarships and his run-down church apartment and the free college applications he’s going to have to beg for and the twenty-four hundred dollars that he hasn’t forced Ronan to take back and the long drive out of Henrietta and he decides that he could probably bear it if Noah got the favor instead.

“Let’s go,” he mumbles into Noah’s skin. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“Okay. Where?”

“I don’t know. Monmouth. Anywhere. Doesn’t matter.”

“Are you alright, Adam?” Noah asks. He finally pulls away, holding Adam at arm’s length as he peers at his face. “You sound… off.”

Adam smiles at him faintly and nods. “Yeah. I’m alright.”

“Okay. Let me know if something’s up, though,” Noah says. “And I have no idea how to get out of here.”

Adam laughs a little and takes Noah’s arm at the elbow, tugging him forward, away from the clearing. “I do. It’s this way.”

He leads Noah through a seemingly unending path of trees and root systems and strange puddles that are deeper than they should be and everything looks repetitive and confusing until they’re abruptly outside of it, face to face with Adam’s crappy car and the road sprawling out behind it. Adam digs his keys out and unlocks the driver’s side door, and Noah waits patiently until he reaches across to unlock the passenger’s side too before he slides in. The car makes a tired noise as Adam tries to start it. Noah thumps the dashboard and it sighs, giving up and turning over the engine ruefully.

“So. Where are we headed, Parrish?” Noah asks. He kicks his feet up onto the dashboard and tucks his hands behind his head, looking at Adam with a small smile.

Adam looks back, and then he reaches into his pocket and throws the deck of tarot cards into the back seat. “Same as ever,” he replies as he throws the car in reverse. “Onwards and upwards.” They hook around the road, and then Adam shifts into first and the tires kick up dirt as they leave Cabeswater humming with energy in their wake.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Here are the cards that Adam pulls, in order:  
> [Ace of Pentacles](http://www.biddytarot.com/cards/ace_pentacles.jpg)  
> [The Tower](http://www.biddytarot.com/cards/tower.jpg)  
> [The World (reversed)](http://www.biddytarot.com/cards/world.jpg)  
> [The Wheel of Fortune](http://www.biddytarot.com/cards/wheel_of_fortune.jpg)  
> [Six of Swords](http://www.biddytarot.com/cards/six_swords.jpg)


End file.
